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Sunday, 27 September 2015

Ten Things Only An '80s Warhammer Enthusiast Would Understand

Does clickbait annoy you too? I am sure we have all fallen in the trap of moving that cursor over that rather intriguing statement or unusual photograph; I know I have. They seem to begin with stuff like: 'She thought she was going to the cinema but what her boyfriend did next blew her mind!' You click the link, and there he is with a large (not regular) box of popcorn! What a risk taker!

My wife is keen to install some kind of filter on the computer to stop pop-up rubbish like this annoying her (she always falls for them you see) and when I have completed this missive, she plans to install Windows 10 - which may or may not have the tools to do so. But at the moment I have some quiet time this Sunday afternoon so I felt like creating some clickbait of my own, Oldhammer style.

You often see those '10 things that only a child growing up in the 90s would understand' style posts kicking about. A lot of them are awfully poor, but one of two have amused me a little and I thought to do an '80s Warhammer one.

Hence this post.

So in no particular order, here we have 'Ten Things Only An '80s Warhammer Enthusiast Would Understand'. Hopefully, you can appreciate them all!

1. You got really excited by the number of blister packs that hung on the walls of GW

In the days before corporate packaging and bland plastic models there was a wealth of wargaming miniatures hanging from rather wobbly pegs suspended from the wall. Hundreds and hundreds in fact and they didn't all have the same tedious card designs either. Orcs and Goblins came in luminous green, Chaos are a rather sickly red and green and so on. You could easily push your way through the throng of gamers to locate the range you were after, though with the rarity of actual catalogues, you never really knew what you might find.

2. The name of this particular paint made you chuckle.

We all did it. We all stood around the paint section in the stores of old sniggering about the name of this paint. It's very name was encouragement enough to buy it with the pocket money you had to burn. Using it, you would commit painting atrocities on your miniatures when you got home (as using the colour was rather difficult) but you could smirk at the memory while doing so.

3. Fraser Gray was an enigma! How did he paint that well? With enamels?

He produced miniatures that were truly awe inspiring with that stinky paint your dad used to paint trains and Napoleonics with. You, by comparison, created appalling splodges of colour with the modern acrylic paints. A pattern that has yet to change.

4. You were unbelievably jealous when photographs like this appeared in White Dwarf.

Bastard! Bastard! Bastard! Why was it that the caption writer made the suffering worse with the phrase 'just some of '?

5. You happily gave these away free to a friend when you switched to Blood Bowl!

Yeah, of course you can have these old books now that I have swapped to the third edition of Blood Bowl. I won't be needing them again. Will I regret it in years to come? Of course I will!

6. You cut up cereal packets in an attempt to build a model house

Inspired by seminal articles like this, you hastily hack up a couple of cereal packets and attempt to glue them together with PVA. The resulting soggy mess looks nothing like the picture in the article, so you chuck away your efforts and buy Warhammer Townscape instead. Then you buy another copy of Warhammer Townscape as your first attempt to build the watermill involves cutting through most of the book, spilling copydex over the remaining pages and sticking the wrong wall to the wrong roof.

Happy days.

7. You spent ages looking at the names and photographs of the Citadel crew.

Another month, another run down of the personalities that made up your favourite magazine. You wish they were your friends, even though the photographs of Bryan always scared you a bit. Actually, you wished you were one of them and got to play games all day long. Because that is all that they did, yes?

8. You ruined countless plastic figures using poly-cement to stick them together.

Superglue too expensive? No need to worry, as good old Humbrol polystyrene cement is here to stay. You have just bought Skeleton Army, have you? That's a great box set with so many options. You carefully cut all the delicate pieces from the sprue in preparation, then you get sticking. Fifteen minutes later, all of your new undead troops look like they have severe influenza, with long trails of a mucus like substance oozing from beneath their heads and arms. It also took hours for this glue to dry properly, which gave the limbs and skulls of your skeletons plenty of time to slowly move out of position. I don't know how many skeleton armies I saw that looked to be doing the funky chicken, but I lost count at ten.

9. Rang up Fist without your parents knowing and got bollocked for the phone bill!

Good old Robin. Yeah, his parents let you do whatever you like around their house. They even swear and tell rude jokes when you kids are in the room. Role models! They won't mind if you encourage Robin to ring the number just after lunch and play through a couple of hours of this! He might win a real gold coin!

I heard he is still paying off that phone bill.

10. You lorded it up with your many sided dice over enormous tables

You felt all 'grown up' and 'sophisticated' because you rolled endlessly on innumerable tables such as this. Hang about, you still do!!

I too fell foul of the stuff, though it was Warhammer Fantasy Regiments that suffered from its use. My dad gave me an ancient bottle of liquid poly (most likely originating the 1970s) once he saw the mess I had made, and plastic was a doddle from then on in.

Hell, I STILL use poly-cement on plastics (especially the polystyrene ones GW make). The solvent bond is stronger than a superglue bond (at least bits don't fly off in random directions when they fall off the table onto the floor). Not that superglue doesn't have a place - but the right glue for the right job comes into play.

The best thing about superglue is that it's a lot easier to take stuff apart and fix it when you pick it up for a steal second hand 6 months down the track.

The time at Robin's house was my only experience with FIST. Though I did spend hours pouring over the artwork wondering what they were like. Shit, is probably the most honest answer. Though, are there any FIST fans out there who actually played them properly?

Finding a new store and seeing their wall of blisters (and then seeing what old blisters I'd never seen before) was always a high point of hitting new towns. The fun of discovery was a big part of my early GW fandom.

Or going to a random hobby shop in the middle of nowhere and finding that one blister of pewter epic space marine drop pods amidst the model trains and packs of lichen and never knowing how it got there.

Growing up in basically the middle of nowhere, there wasn't a GW near me until they finally got around to opening one in Exeter. This meant that buying miniatures was often a case of selecting from whatever meagre stock the few locations around that dealt in toys and games had, or clubbing together with friends to buy stuff via the mail order trolls

We all know it happened back then when these sought after books were still on sale. I spent twenty years looking for The Lost and the Damned. I recall finding a copy in a bookshop during a fleeting visit to the Island of Jersey. Only, it was a Sunday and the place was shut and I was due to catch ship in less than an hour! ): I wonder what lucky soul picked up that beauty?

Haha! So true =) 'Titillating pink' was one paint I never owned sadly.Even sadder is the fact that I had a pot of 'Spearstaff brown' but could never think of what I could've possibly painted with it... sigh.

How about #11 You actually got excited about Drastik Plastik Orcs. Not that we ever really knew if they were destined for WFB or WH40K. They looked like they were off to some Hawaii themed BBQ wielding the forerunner of the Big Choppa.

11. Little did I know that painting miniatures would be a hobby for life. Thirty years later I still enjoy painting and miniatures from my childhood are among the best ever sculpted! Of course there are many more left to paint. Number eleven would be that your pile of unpainted lead miniatures continues to grow no matter how fast you paint them!

No 3 - enamel paints have some excellent characteristcs. The slow drying times can make some blending techniques easier than with acrylics. The colour density was, back in the day, way better than some acrylics too.